


An Uncertain Conviction

by Pearl_Pilots_In_Chains



Series: Of Tears and Ash [18]
Category: Hercules: The Legendary Journeys
Genre: Discussion, Gen, world building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:35:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25715905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pearl_Pilots_In_Chains/pseuds/Pearl_Pilots_In_Chains
Summary: Ligeia meets with a friend of hers to discuss a matter of business.
Series: Of Tears and Ash [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1050806
Kudos: 8





	An Uncertain Conviction

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline-wise, this occurs on the same day as "A Second Shot At Successful Storytelling."

Ligeia rested her chin upon a fist, inclining her head inward as she regarded the man who sat across the table from her.After a moment, her tone ribbing, she asked, “So, to what do I owe the very dubious pleasure of meeting with the preeminent of rogues, by his own account, no less, this evening?”

Autolycus grinned at his friend’s teasing, and pointed a finger in Ligeia’s directed.“Ah, my friend, I’m so glad you ask me that.”

“You are, hmm?”Ligeia leaned back in her seat, raising an eyebrow skeptically.“Why am I guessing I’m not going to like the explanation you have for me.”

Autolycus waved a hand dismissively at this.“Ah, madame, you mistake me for a common ruffian, when I am so much more refined than that.I endeavor to be the absolute model of a gentleman in all of my pursuits.Never fear, my reasons for calling upon you tonight are perfectly noble.”

Ligeia rolled her eyes.“Autolycus, my friend, ‘perfectly noble’ isn’t a phrase that suits you.No matter how much you think it does.Trust me on that.”

Autolycus shrugged nonchalantly.“Well then, perhaps my reasons for dropping by aren’t ‘noble’ per se, but neither are they altogether horrid.There, is that better pitch?”

Ligeia pursed her lips, before nodding.“I’ll accept it, for now anyway.So, spill the goods.What is it this time?”She raised her cotyle to her lips and took a sip of her wine.

“To be honest with you,” Autolycus began, leaning in as if to speak furtively, despite the fact that they were already alone, “I’ve come to ask for your help with a certain matter.”

Ligeia set her wine back down and fixed him with an unimpressed expression.“Why am I not surprised by that?”She deadpanned.

Autolycus chuckled at this reaction, and took a drink of his own wine.“I don’t mean to make a habit of it,” he assured her, failing to sound particularly convincing.

“You say that now, but the facts prove otherwise,” Ligeia observed, definitively unmoved by his assurance.“It seems that every time you show up, it’s to ask for my assistance.I would think that the great king of thieves himself wouldn’t care to rely so much on the skills of another.”

“You have a fair point,” Autolycus admitted.“But if I come to you for aid as often as I do, it is only because I believe wholeheartedly in your abilities,” he added, apparently trying out flattery as a tactic.Ligeia wasn’t persuaded by this.

“As I recall, you used that exact same line the last time you came to recruit me.The job in Thebes, remember?”

“Ah well, who can really say such things for certain,” Autolycus demurred.“After all, that was a fair while ago now.The passage of time has a way of distorting things, making it unclear what precisely occurred, you know how it goes,” he pronounced vaguely.

“You are as proficient in the art of evasion as you were four months ago, that ‘fair while ago’ of which you speak, I see,” Ligeia remarked, a smile playing over her face.She raised her vessel of wine to her lips once more.

“Why thank you, my friend,” Autolycus responded pleasantly.“I will take that as a compliment.”

“I would expect nothing less of you,” Ligeia opined, dry wit in her voice.She paused for a moment, before carrying on.“So, pleasantries aside, what are you trying to drag me into this time?”

“A conspiracy, or so my intuition tells me,” Autolycus answered, sobering up a bit from his more relaxed demeanor during their banter.

“A conspiracy, you say?”Ligeia replied, tapping a finger upon the side of her cotyle.“How positively thrilling.”Her tone suggested that this observation was sarcasm.“What sort of conspiracy would this one happen to be?”

“Well, I’d say this conspiracy is one of the regicidal variety,” Autolycus answered.“Though, that’s not really the part of the conspiracy which I’m interested in.”

“Damn, just when it sounded as though this might actually be a conspiracy worthy of my attention,” Ligeia commented, her tone still laconic.“Because, as you know, regicide, unlike sororicide, or fratricide, or any of their ilk, can actually have some fascinating results.The whole resulting power vacuum, political upheaval, the matter of succession, and all that.It really makes for quite a show.”

“It is a bit of an affair, there’s no doubt about that,” Autolycus concurred.

“And with individuals such as ourselves, who ply a trade concerned to some degree with morbid subjects such as national turmoil, it is best for us to be aware of these things, even if that is the extent of our investment in them,” Ligeia asserted, still maintaining an impassive tone, despite her words conveying an opinion on the topic.

“I fully agree with you there,” Autolycus responded.

“So, are you going to reveal the details of this possible conspiracy?”Ligeia queried.

“Of course, of course,” Autolycus confirmed, taking a drink of his wine.He steepled his fingers before his mouth as he began to speak again.“My involvement in the matter began when I was contacted through one of my normal channels of communication, by a new prospective client, who said he had a job in which I might be interested.The price which he stated he would be willing to pay drew my attention, as it was quite high.I agreed to meet with this prospective employer, who gave his name to me as Anaxagoras, in order to learn the nature of the job he was offering me.At this meeting, I discover that the job in question a composite one, consisting of several assassinations, each of prominent leaders or rulers.”

“It seems that this potential client didn’t understand the difference between a thief and an assassin,” Ligeia remarked.

“I had the same thought myself after he pitched the job to me,” Autolycus responded.

“I take it then, that you declined the gig?”Ligeia inquired, clearly already knowing the answer.

“You are of course correct.I wasn’t eager to get caught up in the chaos that might result.I prefer to watch such crises unfold, and benefit from them where I can, without getting swept up in the midst of them myself,” Autolycus affirmed.

“A commendable approach,” Ligeia commented.“One which I prefer to take as well.”

“Indeed,” Autolycus said with a nod.“Anyhow, when I eventually turned down Anaxagoras’s offer, which I was forced to do rather bluntly, as he maintained obliviousness to my more subtle hints, he departed in a rather irate state.At the time, I hoped that would be the end of the matter, though I felt that it unfortunately, it might not be.”

“I take it that your hunch was proven correct, then?”Ligeia questioned.

“You assume right,” Autolycus said, frowning.“Anaxagoras was incensed and foolish enough to send a group of thugs after me.”

Ligeia cocked an eyebrow, looking rather humored by this development.“I take it that he was unaware of your reputation?”

“I’d say so,” Autolycus replied.“And moreover, the thugs he sent were complete amateurs!An insult, to be sure.I dispatched them easily, though not before prying out the identity of their employer.Since then, I’ve been stalking Anaxagoras.I’ve trailed him up the coast for the last four days.At the moment, he’s staying in an inn across the town.”

Ligeia stroked her chin contemplatively.“I take it you’ve held off on eliminating him because you believe he is working for someone else, and hope to find his employer through him?”

“Precisely,” Autolycus confirmed.

“Why go to such trouble though?”Ligeia inquired.“You could exact your revenge on him quick enough and be done with it.After all, the identity of his employer is rather irrelevant in the matter, unless you now wish to somehow become enmeshed into the conspiracy which you chose to remain free of by declining the job.”

“A fair question,” Autolycus conceded.“And normally, I would have done just that.But something about this matter has begun to poke at the fringes of my mind, whispering within my spirit that there is something more to this.It is a suspicion, nothing more, and yet, I cannot rid myself of it.”

Ligeia’s lips twisted into a critical expression.“It is unlike you to act on such indeterminate impulses.Is there some specific element in all of this which has drawn your focus?”

Autolycus shook his head.“I can’t say that there is.I know that whatever backer Anaxagoras has, they have considerable wealth, considering both the sum of payment he offered me, and the quality of the inns in which he stays.I know little more beyond that however, aside from the details of the job which we discussed.”

“And you do not think that this Anaxagoras could himself be the mastermind of the scheme in its entirety?”

“I think it highly unlikely,” Autolycus acknowledged.“He did not strike me in our meeting as someone capable of that level of strategy.”

“Hmm.”Ligeia fell silent for a time.“You know,” she at last began, “This seems to be the most foolish matter you have ever tried to pull me into.”

“I can’t argue with that,” Autolycus agreed, taking a solid swig of his wine.

“You don’t have any qualms over devoting your time to it, even when you have other, better uses for it?”Ligeia queried, a fair degree of skepticism in her voice.“As I recall, you have often been the one to promote the ideal that time is something best monetized.”

“Your case is strong there as well,” Autolycus allowed.He ran a hand through his hair, a physical expression of his cogitation.His eyes were distant and brooding as he inspected the table beneath him, running a finger from his free hand along the texture of the wood.

“You don’t have a counterargument to give me then?”Ligeia asked, raising her cotyle, but scrutinizing it rather than drinking from it.Her eyes fell on the designs which decorated the sides of it, a scene of nymphs rising from the waters of a river, dancing atop the current.There was a sense of whimsy to the scene.It was not quite to her taste at the moment.She set the cup back down on the tabletop and fixed Autolycus, still seemingly deep in thought, with an incisive gaze.“You seem distracted,” she uttered pointedly.

“You’re not wrong,” Autolycus said, moving his hand from his hair to mustache, to scratch at the corner of it.“I can’t quite explain it, I’m afraid.It is a bizarre sensation, my friend, this specter which gambols beyond the reaches of my mind, content to stay out of sight, but within my frame of perception, so that I know it is present, and yet am unable to identify what it might be.There is something wonderfully infuriating about it.”

“How poetically oxymoronic,” Ligeia noted, laconic as she was sardonic.

“I suppose so,” Autolycus admitted, prying his fingers away from his mustache with some difficulty.They seemed reluctant to cease movement of their own accord, Ligeia observed.

“What exactly do you want my help with in this matter?”She asked after a moment passed in silence between them.

He looked back up at her, as if reaching some difficult revelation through his deliberation.“I could use someone else at my side in this pursuit,” he answered sincerely.

“You want me to go off alongside you, chasing some former client, now enemy of yours, with the intent of discovering his employer through him?”

He considered this description for a moment, before nodding to it.“I will certainly make it worth your time of course,” he stated.

“I would expect nothing less of you,” Ligeia responded.

He laughed lightly at this.“It’s not as if this little diversion will damage my financial integrity,” he mused.

“No, that much is most certainly true,” Ligeia agreed.“Though you could very well never work another day in your life, and have no shortage of funds available for the remainder of it.”Autolycus dipped his head, assenting to this statement.Ligeia furrowed her brow for a good few seconds more.At last, she asked, “And what exactly do you plan to do if you discover the identity of Anaxagoras’s employer?”

Autolycus puckered his lips, thinking the question over.“Well, at the moment, I’m rather tempted to take them out.On account of the arrogance of their employee, you know.I think I’d get rid of him then too.”

“That’s rather rich, coming from the man who once argued that unnecessary murder was unprofessional in our line of work,” Ligeia returned.“Is this really that personal of an affair?”

“This inkling in the recesses of my mind tells me it should be,” Autolycus replied, an unusual fervor in his tone, as though he was a man possessed of some strange obsession.

Ligeia narrowed her eyes, appraising her friend and his request.“And the compensation for my time?”She inquired.Reaching his hand somewhere out of view beneath the table, he drew out five coins and set them before her.She raised an eyebrow with interest as she picked up one of the quinarii, watching the lamplight reflect off of the golden surface.“The severity of the matter to you is no jest, hmm?”She remarked as she turned the quinarius over in her hand.He said nothing in reply to this, which didn’t terribly surprise her.Her eyes flitted back to him after a moment.“Very well then.I’ll endure your company for a time.”

He nodded at this.“For that, I’m grateful,” he stated, with only a trace of the usual humor that would accompany such a pronouncement in his voice.Her eyes moved back to the coin between her fingers, her thoughts wandering elsewhere.

**Author's Note:**

> This is another one of my HTLJ fics from 2018 (set in my "Of Tears and Ash" AU) that I never posted, but decided I might as well, considering the time I put into them. Once again, since I'm no longer really in the fandom, I'm backdating this to when I wrote it, so no one thinks I'm suddenly back into HTLJ.


End file.
